“I found this awesome sweater pattern and my Delf girl would just love it…but it’s made for humans! How do I re-size it?”
Although more and more people are buying and knitting for ball-jointed dolls, there still aren’t very many patterns out there designed for them. Even when BJD patterns do exist, sometimes they’re designed for a chunky mini when yours is slim, or written for a large doll when you really want to knit them for your tiny.
I’ve posted a number of times over at Den Of Angels about how to re-size patterns, and I thought maybe it was time to have a more permanent home for such useful information…here are the posts (mostly mine, but with some additions from other forum members).
How to re-size a human pattern
There are two methods for re-sizing human patterns. I generally prefer the second one, especially for a complicated pattern, but the first is great for anything simple.
Method 1
Using the same yarn and needles the pattern calls for, divide everything in the pattern by 3 or 4, depending on the size of your doll (3=60cm or 1/3 scale; 4=45cm or 1/4 scale). Remember to divide the number of stitches and also the number of rows! Then follow the pattern. Increases/decreases may take a little trial and error adjustment with this method, so be prepared to rrrrrip it!
Method 2
Size your needles and yarn down until you can get 3 or 4 times the pattern’s recommended gauge, and follow the pattern as written. This sounds backwards, but as Serafim over at Yarnia explains, “you have to remember that it’s a scale of 1:3 so you need to have 1/3 of the measurements, to make that fit you need to adjust the tension so it fits over 1/3 of the gauge on the pattern
ie if it’s 12cmx12cm and 15st x 12rows, you need 15st and 12 rows over 4cmx4cm, so over the same size it’s three times as much.”
This technique can also be used to adapt children’s patterns for larger tinies, but it will take more measuring on your part, and possibly scarier numbers. To figure out what fraction of scale your tiny is compared to the measurements (i.e. 1/5? 1/6?), divide the pattern’s measurement by your doll’s measurement. Then use that number just as you did the 3 or 4 from 1/3 or 1/4.
KCurry also weighed in:
[For a 60-cm doll,] multiply the gauge by 3. In this case, you follow the pattern completely, but you substitute yarn and needles that will give you three times the gauge. If the pattern calls for a gauge of 5 stitches per inch, you swatch until you have a yarn/needle combination that gives you 15 stitches per inch, and a fabric that is neither too tight nor too loose for your project. You are still left with the decision of which size to follow. You can check this by measuring your doll, For instance, if her hips are 10 inches and your gauge is 15 stitches per inch, you will need 150 stitches to go around her hips without stretching. Choose the pattern size that gives you that (you can also use your gauge and your dolls measurements to create your own patterns).
I re-sized the pattern, but it still won’t fit!
Polyhymnia on DoA wondered how to proceed “if, say, my 1/4 scale doll (Soulkid) has a bust measurement of 7.5 inches and I multiply that by 4 to get the corresponding human measurement, [getting] 30 inches, which is quite a bit smaller than the small sizes of an adult knitting pattern.”
One thing to bear in mind is that 1/4 scale dolls may fit patterns designed for children a little better than those designed for adults – especially when they are not “mature minis” like Unoa or MiniFee. But even if you are using adult patterns, the measurement given may be larger (or smaller) than the chest it’s meant to fit – for example, in this season’s Knitty magazine, I see that Lia, a sweater meant to fit quite closely, starts with a 28-inch circumference in the smallest size, while Mothed, which is meant to be more roomy & drape a little, has a smallest size of 32 inches which would probably fit an actual chest anywhere from 28-30″. Depending on the sweater, I’ve seen them with as much as 10″ of positive ease (positive ease=larger than actual measurement; negative ease=smaller than actual so it clings). So if you have a particular pattern in mind that starts larger than 30″, have a look at how it’s fitted before you worry that it’s the wrong size.
That said, some patterns are just too big for super-skinny BJDs (super skinny humans have the same problem too). In that case, you’ll need to cast on fewer stitches. I’ve written up a walk through of how I do this for a simple-ish sweater, bottom up, without shaping…if anyone’s interested in the process for a sweater with shaping or different construction I can update with that later, but the theory is still basically the same.
- Divide the number of stitches to cast on by the gauge to get the actual measurement of the garment. You should use your doll-scale gauge, not the pattern’s gauge.
For example, my DollsTown mini with a chest that’s 7.25″ around wants the aforementioned Lia. The yarn & needles I’m using give me 10 sts/inch. I take the number of stitches to cast on for the smallest size and divide by my gauge to get the actual measurement of the garment as written: 70sts ÷ 10 sts/inch = 7″ - Figure out the difference between the actual size and the size you want the garment to be, taking into account ease: subtract your desired measurement from the actual one. We’ll call this number “The Difference.”
Because Lia should fit tightly, I want the measurement to be more like 6.5″, giving me 3/4″ of negative ease – I got this number by dividing the pattern’s suggestion (0-3″) by my doll’s scale (4) to get 3/4, but you can go by feel a bit as well. I subtract my measurement from the pattern’s: 7-6.5″=0.5″ - Multiply The Difference by your gauge. This is the number of stitches you must remove in order to make the garment fit your doll. If the sweater is plain, it’s as easy as just casting on fewer stitches, but if there are cables, lace patterns, etc. you may have to subtract a couple more or fewer stitches to make everything work out nicely.
For me, I start by calculating: 0.5″ x 10 sts/inch = 5 sts that I have to make the sweater smaller by. In this case, I am starting with a 5-stitch pattern (P2, K3), so it seems like this will be an easy adjustment…I look ahead in the pattern and notice that I must take this 5-stitch chunk out of the back, or else I’ll un-centre the cable pattern on the front. So if I was using markers to show the front & back of my work, the front would have 35 sts and the back would have 30. - Remember the adjustment you’ve made! Write it down if you can. As you work through the pattern, remember that any stitch counts written on the page will be different from yours because of the change you made!
When I get to the point of dividing for the armholes & neckline, I must remember that the back of my sweater is 5 sts smaller than the written pattern. I will (changes in bold):Work 32 sts in pattern, BO 5 sts, work 24 sts in pattern, BO 5 sts, work 14 sts in pattern, k1, turn. Begin working back and forth, leaving remaining stitches to be worked later.
Next up: adjusting increases & decreases, and adapting from Barbie patterns!
[…] Re-sizing Patterns For Your BJD […]
Hello I was interested to see your article on resizing knitting patterns for bjd. I wondered if this would work for tiny bjd though; I think you would need the specialized patterns designed for this size to make them practical to knit.
I know there are not many patterns out there, but I have recently developed quite a few and am regularly contacted by collectors for custom items. If anyone would like any tips on knitting for the tiny size I am always happy to help. With best regards, Helen http://www.bitstobuy.co.uk
It certainly takes a lot more work to re-size knitting patterns for the tinies and super tinies. It helps starting with kids’ patterns instead of adult-sized ones, but the numbers don’t work out as well and it’s often hard, even for an adventurous knitter, to get a small enough gauge. I’m definitely pleased to be part of the growing group of designers making patterns specifically for BJDs.
There are a ton of patterns out there for Kelly dolls. Really, for the really tiny ones, I think that is where I would start (ie. pukipuki, realpuki, lati white…..etc)
As for YoSd sizes, I was thinking that resizing a pattern for an 18″ doll might work better, but have yet to try it out.
Hello?i really like this blog 😀 and i was wondering…^^
could you maybe show yourself knitting an SD13 (1/3) bjd sweater,using one of your methods listed above to re-size it? i have a hard time understanding the simplest of things,but i can always understand videos! :)thanks in advance!!!
You want a video…of me…doing arithmetic??? XD
The knitting part is exactly the same as for human-size stuff, and there are tons of videos already – check out KnittingHelp.com for a wonderful selection of basics. I’m really not sure if I could make a video that was any more helpful than this post…really, it’s all just multiplication and division!
oh pooh >.<
how about …a video of you just making a 60cm bjd boy sweater ? 🙂
and do you use circular knitting needles of 4 double points?
(i'm 13,i'm just starting out,sort of^^if i start to bother you,just tell me to shut up^^)
An enthusiastic, young beginner – gotcha! 🙂
To put things a little in perspective, it takes me between 15 and 100 *hours* to knit a doll sweater, depending on the size and complexity (Box Opening Day Dress? Probably less than 20. Prototype for Ur-Bun? Probably close to 80.), so while I think it’s great that you’re so enthusiastic, I think you’ll learn a lot more from checking out the tutorials on youtube and knittinghelp.com that show you basic techniques like knitting in the round, and from practising a lot, than from watching my bored face knitting in front of the TV for 62 hours. When I knit doll clothes, I do it exactly the same as the relevant human garment – just on smaller yarn and needles! 🙂
Circular versus double pointed needles is a very personal choice. For me, it’s DPNs all the way, but a lot of people use circular needles with the Magic Loop Technique (because otherwise it’s hard to get a short enough circular – your cable needs to be shorter than the circumference of what you’re knitting, which in doll stuff is usually less than 12″, when most circular cables are more like 24″). DPNs are a little easier to come by since the sizes that are commonly used for socks also work well for dolls – I recommend starting with 2.5 or 2mm (2mm is a US 0) if you can get them, as they’re small enough to look pretty in-scale, but large enough to be easy to use. Trying out DPNs vs. circulars in human-scale is also a good way to figure out which you prefer before special-ordering smaller sizes – again, any skills you master in large size will serve you well when you scale it down for the dolls!
Good luck – ABJDs and knitting are both awesome hobbies to be getting into!
Wow!thanks!that is so helpful^^ you are a wonderful person!i’ll check those sites out right now! 😀
Yay, happy knitting!
[…] found an article by UndermostSalamander that discusses resizing patterns for dolls and I am in the process of doing a test swatch. I will be posting my results on my Ravelry […]
But what about 70 cm dolls?
It’s true, the 70+cm dolls don’t fit neatly into the calculations for 1/3 or 1/4, but you can still work with the same principles and arithmetic, using chest circumference as your reference.
For example, suppose I want to knit the Jamesey sweater, published in Knitty, for a Dollshe guy (note: if you carefully read the pattern, it refers to before/after shrinking as it’s intended to be knit in cotton and dried in the dryer…I have ignored these calculations for the purposes of the tutorial but if I were really knitting the sweater I would be thinking much more carefully about whether or not I needed to account for them).
The Dollshe 18M body has a chest circumference of 27.5cm or 11 inches. Looking at the sizing for the pattern, I see that it’s written for chest size 34-38″, 40-46″, and 48-54″. Next, I choose a measurement to set up my ratio – I usually look for an easy whole number, and since I’m comfortable with 1/3 and 1/4 size doll stuff I default to checking whether 3 or 4 will work. 3 x 11 = 33, which is smaller than the small end of small. 4 x 11 = 44, which is in the middle of the range for medium, so it looks like the easiest way to adapt this sweater will be to get 1/4 gauge (pattern asks for 19 sts/28 rows over 4″ so I will be looking for 19 sts/ 28 rows over only 1″ or 76 sts/112 rows over 4″, not that I have ever known anyone to knit a full 4″ gauge swatch for doll knitting) and then knit the medium as written (checking for length, especially on the arms, as BJDs are often inhumanly long for their circumference, haha).
If I’m having trouble getting gauge with the convenient numbers (or if my doll’s chest measurement didn’t fit so conveniently into one of the sizes), the real arithmetic comes in. I will need to find the relationship between my doll’s actual chest measurement and the chest measurement I wish he had if he were a human (I’ll call this “my ratio”). I’m going to set my goal on the top end of the small size, because I like my male dolls dressed in close-fitting sweaters rather than loose, boxy ones and say that I want to knit the small size and have it fit as though my doll had a 38″ chest. My ratio is my doll’s actual chest circumference divided by my goal apparent circumference: 11″ ÷ 38″ = 0.29 – as you can see, it’s just a little less than 1/3 (0.33). Here’s the tricky part to conceptualize: I will now divide the pattern’s gauge by my ratio (divide something by a number less than one, and you come out with a bigger number – with doll knitting, your gauge will always have more stitches per inch than in the original human pattern). 19 ÷ 0.29 = 65.5 and 28 ÷ 0.29 = 96.5, so over my 4″ gauge swatch I would have about 66 stitches and 97 rows. I divide those numbers by 4 to figure out a number I can work with a bit easier, and figure out that if I aim for 16 sts/24 rows per inch, I will be able to follow the instructions as written for size small.
Of course, to get this gauge requires pretty small yarn and needles – for comparison, 16 sts/inch means even smaller stitches than in my original design for Dollshe, Bernard, which asks you to achieve 15 sts/inch with laceweight yarn on 1.5mm needles to mimic the effect of a worsted-weight sweater on a human. If you find that this small gauge is difficult for you to achieve, you will want to look for patterns written for bulky or super-bulky weight yarn such as Mr. Darcy, also from Knitty, which starts with a gauge of 15 sts/4″ – without going through all the above calculations, I plugged my ratio in to estimate that I would need a much easier gauge of about 52 sts/4″ or 13 sts/inch to achieve comparable fabric.
Hope that helps! Happy knitting!